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End of Ideology
The concept of the end of ideology is closely linked to the idea of the end of utopianism. Whereas Karl Mannheim, in Ideology and Utopia (Ideologie und Utopie, 1929), anticipated the end of utopia, Daniel Bell, in The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties (1960), raised the idea of the inevitable end of the era of ideology.
Mannheim described utopian ideas as altogether incongruent with reality, that is, if translated into action, the ideas would inevitably overthrow the existing social order. By contrast, he described ideology as a totality of ideas, also incongruent with reality, which nevertheless tends to justify and maintain the status quo. It is conceivable, then, on Mannheim's view, that utopian ideas could be regarded as ideological, ...
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